


amalgamation

by kuro49



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Minor Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 17:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13640793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: The old bat is dead. Gotham descends into chaos. His birds are not far behind.





	amalgamation

**Author's Note:**

> or the one where the robins have too much heart to replace dear ol'bats even though it makes every logical sense to do so but unlike bruce, these kids can't make the hard choice. i really just wanted to have them tear into each other and lick each others wounds. they mostly just did the latter.
> 
> this can be set in a version of batman: battle for the cowl where jason isn't hell bent on taking out all the robins and they sort of work together. this can also be set in some future post death of batman.

 

The old bat is dead.

Gotham descends into chaos.

His birds are not far behind.

 

On an ordinary trajectory, they probably would have never met one another if—

Dick Grayson doesn’t witness his parents’ death. Jason Todd doesn’t boost the wheels from the Batmobile. Tim Drake never figures out who Batman is. And, Damian Wayne never learns to kill when he is old enough to stop sleeping in a crib.

—But here, in this life, all of the above happens, one after the other.

Here, they collide again and again and again on a predetermined path and even death can’t quite keep them away from each other.

 

Between the four of them, they have two broken ribs, seven bruised ones to compliment that, a sprained ankle, two dislocated shoulders (one left, one right), a stab wound that is still bleeding sluggishly, and enough bloody scrapes and bruises for them to run out of fingers to count.

They steer clear of the Cave because they do not need Alfred to see the sorry state they are in.

They feel reckless and guilty and ashamed and a whole myriad of other bad feelings but just not enough to stop. They do not want Alfred to have to make the choice to look at them as they are now, fallen so far from their perch. They make this decision for him because the old bat is dead ( _gone_ is the word Red Robin insists on using but the strength behind the technicality wavers each time he says it). Bruce could be purple in the face with an amalgamation of anger and disapproval and disappointment but he isn’t here.

He isn’t here, isn’t here, isn’t fucking here where his robins are free to carry his war on their shoulders and across their bodies like a brand.

They go to lick their wounds outside of the bat’s jurisdiction even if he is gone, trailing after death like they miss the thrill of it all.

 

They end up in Officer Richard Grayson’s Bludhaven apartment, tracking blood and grime from the streets to a home just about as lived in as that empty Wayne penthouse Bruce keeps for no discernible reason.

Coming in through the window, one after another: Nightwing then Robin then Red Hood then Red Robin. Tim locks it firmly behind them, takes a slow assessing scan of every building visible and invisible from here before the curtains are coming down again and Dick navigates with ease in the dark to the wall opposite and turns on the light.

Dick is looking oddly grateful, standing there in black and blue (not just his suit but the blossoming bruises beneath that too) in the middle of a cluttered apartment even if half his things are still in boxes pushed up against the walls.

“Home sweet home.” He says to them while he routes the alarm again, and it is like a taut string cut loose.

Jason lets the tense line of his spine relax, Tim’s shoulders drop, and Damian breathes out.

 

They don’t admit to it but they are all thinking it: It was a very close call tonight.

 

The gauntlets come off. The hood is placed on the kitchen table. The dominos are peeled back, and piece by piece, the suits come off.

The four of them can put together a war-torn landscape on their bodies alone.

 

In a self-destructive sequence that has started its countdown long before Batman disappeared:

Dick isn’t doing enough as Gotham folds in on herself like a carefully constructed pile of wet cardboard. Jason is doing too much when he cleans the streets with blood and death, stringing up the criminals like he is making up for all the years Batman was soft on this city. Tim is seeking for a body of a man that is gone (and dead and dead and dead, nobody disappears for _this_ long without a single sign that Red Robin cannot pick up on and comes back with enough remaining pieces to be put back together, let alone breathing).

And Damian, he isn’t quite sure where he fits into this mess because he has barely settled into Robin and he is already without a Batman. He carefully doesn’t think about the part where Batman is also Bruce Wayne is also his father.

 

“There needs to be a Batman.”

Tim starts and his voice is even, mouth drawn in a steady thin line while Damian puts in the last stitch to the lucky stab (literally in the dark) wound right between the Kevlar plates of his Red Robin suit. Any deeper and—They are not going there.

Instead, he makes it clear that it is a very different thing to say then perhaps, _I think we need to be Batman._

“You _think_?” Jason cuts in, he doesn’t say the rest because being the Arkham Knight, for however brief, is his way of telling them just that.

Tim isn't the only one who has figured it all out, Batman needs a Robin to keep him from crossing that line. It is very much the same the other way around, Robins don't do so well on their own either. They get reckless and they make mistakes (mostly Damian, at times Jason). They can do every single thing right and still get it wrong (Dick). This is why they are here instead of being on their own.

After their stunt tonight, they probably wouldn't be here at all if they were off by themselves (all Tim).

They can win this fight and the next one too but it still feels like a devastating defeat.

“Are you admitting he is dead?” Damian asks, soft and that is all wrong, looking to Tim as Tim turns gingerly to have Damian lift his right foot into his lap so he can begin splinting the sprained ankle.

“He is not.” Tim answers, steel in his voice, fingers wrapped around Damian’s swelling ankle. _Not yet, not until there is a body and even then, Bruce cannot die._ _It is not denial if Jason fucking Todd gets to come back from the dead._  

“He _is_.” Jason bites out, clenching his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to look at the way Dick stares at him, a bleeding heart worn at his sleeves as he comes back from his kitchen with ice packs for everyone and each of their ribs.

The Golden boy doesn’t get to put false hope into him too.

 

They are a sight for sore eyes.

They are the best thing he has seen all night.

 

Across a very thin line is the four of them tearing into each other. They have enough resentment with how the mantle was passed on (from a boy gone, a boy dead, a boy forced out by blood) to make an aim into an intent to kill. They have crossed it before and they can easily cross it again. They have enough scars from one another for this life and the next.

Battle-damaged and worn in a war like this, the Robins are good at a lot of things but staying down is not one of them. 

Left to their own device, the baby birds are vicious.

 

“I can’t be Batman again.”

He took a page out of his mentor’s playbook and rewrites an alternative he can live by. The first Robin steps out from beneath the shadow of the Batman with his hair falling into his eyes. There has always been a man behind the mask, and this one is Nightwing. He cannot give that up again. He has his brothers all in one place, Gotham might be burning but they are not, and Dick Grayson is a lot of things but he is not Bruce Wayne.

There will always be resentment but there is love too.

Dick is not strong enough to put the world above that.

“He can’t be Batman again.” Tim states, pointing to Jason.

Jason wants to laugh but breathing hurts even with the ice pack he has pressed to his ribs. He has nothing to say to that because the Arkham Knight didn’t have any intention to drag Batman through the same mud the Red Hood has made his name from. He doesn’t have to believe in Batman’s rules to want the same thing.

“Are we not enough?” Damian asks, sounding every year of his age.

The Robin colours spread out around him make the others ache because they should be enough but they are not. Gotham has no need for a Robin (or two or three or four) without a Batman, the bat is a symbol unlike anything else on these streets.

“I wish we were, little D.”

The Robins grieve the only way they know how. They do not bury Bruce because they are holding on, holding out on some sort of hope that Jason would scoff at. But they do not take over the mantle of the bat either. Maybe it is the wrong choice but it is one they make together.

Gotham continues her descent into chaos with the usual fanfare.

 

One of these days, Batman has to die.

It matters very little how or why.

They make it today.

 


End file.
